New Series of GPUs Drives DirectX 8 and Programmable Shader Technology Aggressively Into the Mainstream

For further information, contact:
Derek Perez
NVIDIA Corporation
Telephone (408) 486-2512
E-mail: dperez@nvidia.com

For Immediate Release:

SANTA CLARA, CA  — OCTOBER 1, 2001 — NVIDIA® Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA) today announced its new GeForce Titanium series of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs).  The GeForce3 Ti and GeForce2 Ti series of GPUs deliver breakthrough graphics technologies, each providing unprecedented levels of performance and visual quality. These new products also utilize NVIDIA’s high-performance Detonator XP driver, incorporating special software optimizations that immediately take full advantage of the newest features of the Microsoft® Windows® XP operating system.

“Today’s introduction of our GeForce Titanium series of GPUs continues our quest to deliver dramatic advances in 3D technology and cinematic-quality graphics on every PC,” stated Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO at NVIDIA. “The GeForce Titanium Series is our most aggressive product introduction ever.  We are delivering twice the performance at every price point.  We are also taking a giant step to drive NVIDIA’s ‘GeForce Shader Technology’ aggressively into the mainstream.  The combination of GeForce3, Xbox, and the GeForce Titanium Series will create an installed base of NVIDIA’s GeForce Shader Technology exceeding 5 million units by early next year.  And with our patented UDA driver architecture, we’re bringing our industry recognized driver quality, stability, and application compatibility, to the XP platform.  The Geforce Titanium Series will be the unambiguous graphics platform of choice of Windows XP.”

The new GeForce Titanium series consists of three new products:

• GeForce3 Ti 500 ― The GeForce3 Ti 500 is the world’s fastest, feature rich GPU and the flagship product of NVIDIA’s desktop graphics family. The GeForce3 Ti 500 offers unparalleled anti-aliasing performance, 3.8 billion anti-aliased samples per second, and introduces groundbreaking new 3D graphics features to the desktop PC.
• GeForce3 Ti 200 ―The GeForce3 Ti 200 is the first DirectX 8 GPU targeted at the performance mainstream market. By delivering 2.8 billion anti-aliased samples per second, the GeForce3 Ti 200 brings high-performance 3D graphics and state-of-the-art image quality to the performance-minded consumer.
• GeForce2 Ti - GeForce2 Ti redefines graphics performance for mainstream computers by delivering 1 billion pixels/sec. rendering power and delivering a groundbreaking 6.4GB/sec. of bandwidth for the mainstream consumer.

All of the GeForce Titanium GPUs utilize the recently announced Detonator XP Unified Driver Architecture (UDA). Detonator XP includes specific technology designed to unleash the power of the highly anticipated Windows® XP operating system. It also provides performance enhancements for Windows 98, Windows 2000, and Windows Me environments.  Detonator XP is available free of charge, and can be downloaded at www.nvidia.com.

"Microsoft's Windows XP promises to unlock the richness and potential of the connected digital word with new levels of stability and performance," said Dr. Jon Peddie, the leading market analyst in computer graphics. "The combination of XP on a GeForce Titanium GPU with its unified Detonator XP driver will be a synergistic exploitation of technology that the users have been waiting for.”
 

About the GeForce3 Ti 500/200
The new GeForce3 Ti 500 and GeForce3 Ti 200 GPUs bring many new innovations to the consumer desktop PC, including support for shadow buffer technology and 3D textures. The use of shadow buffers―hardware acceleration for creating realistic shadows―has been field proven for such animated films as Columbia Pictures computer-generated (CG) motion picture Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, but until today, the technology was only available on professional rendering equipment. The support for 3D textures allows developers to create an unlimited palette of visual effects, including the ability to make hollow objects solid, and adorn them with additional three-dimensional properties such as wood grain or marbling.  These new features, combined with the programmable nfiniteFX™ Engine and NVIDIA GeForce3 Lightspeed Memory Architecture, deliver the most visually compelling and complete graphics experience available today.  The GeForce3 Ti series is the reference platform of choice for Windows XP, as well as the technology foundation for the Microsoft Xbox™ game console.  NVIDIA has also licensed graphics technology supported in the original GeForce3 architecture for use in both the Microsoft DirectX® and the SGI™ OpenGL® 1.3 application programming interfaces (APIs).

About the GeForce2 Ti
The GeForce2 family—including GeForce2 Ti, GeForce2 Pro, and GeForce2 GTS—is the world’s first real-time per-pixel shading series of processors.  The GeForce2 Ti dramatically raises the bar for graphics performance offered at mainstream prices, nearly doubling the performance of similarly priced products.  Major features of the GeForce2 Ti include a transform and lighting architecture delivering up to 31 million triangles/sec., a high-definition video processor (HDVP), and the NVIDIA Shading Rasterizer (NSR), ground breaking technology that enables per-pixel shading capabilities.

Availability
New add-in-cards featuring the GeForce3 Ti 500, 200 and GeForce2 Ti will be available as early as October 12th, 2001. In addition, PC OEMs will ship with the new GPUs in the next 45 days. For more information on NVIDIA’s GeForce Titanium Series of GPUs – please visit www.nvidia.com.

About NVIDIA
NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq - NVDA), located in Santa Clara, CA, is the global leader in advanced graphics and multimedia processing technology for the consumer and professional computing markets. Its 2D, 3D, video and multimedia capabilities make NVIDIA one of the premier semiconductor companies in the world. NVIDIA offers a wide range of products and services, delivering superior performance and crisp visual quality for PC-based applications such as manufacturing, science, e-business, entertainment and education.

Certain statements in this press release, including the statements relating to the Company's performance expectations for NVIDIA's family of products and expectations of continued revenue growth, are forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause results to be materially different than expectations.  Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, manufacturing and other delays relating to new products, difficulties in the fabrication process and dependence of the Company on third-party manufacturers, general industry trends including cyclical trends in the PC and semiconductor industries, the impact of competitive products and pricing alternatives, market acceptance of the Company's new products, and the Company's dependence on third-party developers and publishers.  Investors are advised to read the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, particularly those sections entitled "Certain Business Risks," for a fuller discussion of these and other risks and uncertainties.

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